Field of the Disclosure
Aspects of the disclosure relate to resonant microcavity sensors.
Description of Related Art
Single-molecule detection is one of the fundamental challenges of modern biology. Detection techniques often use labels that can be expensive, difficult to produce, and for small analytes might perturb the molecular events being studied. Analyte size plays an important role in determining detectability. In this regard, highly sensitive biodetection is important for many applications such as high throughput drug discovery studies, as it can significantly reduce the amount of analyte needed and speed the assays. A variety of applications in medical diagnostics (e.g. detecting trace amounts of tumor specific antigens to monitor the re-occurrence of cancer) and public health (e.g. detecting bacteria or viruses) could benefit from improved speed and sensitivity. Methods such as fluorescent tagging and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) are capable of highly sensitive biodetection down to the single molecule level. However the labels can be expensive, difficult to produce and might perturb the molecular events being studied. If the sensitivity of label-free biosensing techniques can be advanced to the single-molecule level, fundamental studies may become more direct and decisive, permitting, for example, studies of molecular conformations and biosensing in general without the need for the fabrication of specific tags for each molecule of interest. Similar issues arise in the detection of other small objects or particles such as nanoparticles.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide improved systems, devices and methods for detecting, e.g., unlabeled biological molecules or nanoparticles and aspects of the disclosure are generally directed to that end.